Keanu Reeves is having a big TV day, both directly and indirectly. On the indirect side, his movie, The Devil’s Advocate, was just set up by NBC as a new TV Series, but that’s not even the big news.
The scoop is that Reeves is heading to TV himself as both the producer and star of a new action series titled: Rain. The show is based on the highly popular John Rain book series by Barry Eisler.
Here’s the Wikipedia description of John Rain from the book series:
John Rain is a fictional character created by Barry Eisler. He appears in seven of Eisler’s espionage novels as an assassin for hire who specializes in making his victims appear to have died of natural causes. Rain is a Vietnam War veteran who served with the Special Forces; he was later recruited by the CIA, but by the time he appears in the first of the “John Rain” novels, “Rain Fall”, he is working “freelance,” offering his assassination services to any client willing to follow his three rules: 1) No women or children, 2) No secondary team working separately on an assassination Rain is handling, 3) Principal actors only (i.e., no hits on family members, etc., in order to “send a message”).
Rain’s years of training in the Special Forces, CIA, and as an assassin for hire manifest themselves in a deep-seated paranoia, an inability to trust anyone, and the drive to eliminate any loose ends (usually through killing) that may leave him vulnerable to payback or revenge.